Changing Course in the Middle of a Trade

You've done your homework.

You backtested your strategy, paper-traded it, and now you're trading it live.

Congratulations! You've done a lot of work to get here.

A trade appears, and your system takes it.

Nice, you've got your plan - no decisions to make - you've already made them when you created your strategy.

But now, as you look at the chart, something doesn't seem right.

The stop doesn't look right, maybe the daily chart seems odd, maybe one of your trading buddies says he's skipping it.

What do you do?

Maybe you get nervous and change course - change the stop, bail on the trade - it could be anything.

But wait...

Let's think about the ramifications of overriding your plan.

You've done a lot of research to get to this point.

You've automated your setup.

Everything is working as designed.

Overriding it at this point is, on some level, saying your original process for creating this strategy wasn't good enough.

You're disrespecting the work you've already put in.

All that work - and you're ignoring it.

Next time, don't override your work by changing course during a perfectly valid trade.

Ask yourself: how can I change my process so that I don't feel the need to override my next trade?